Re-evaluating the Yulia paradox

General
21

you can keep citing 7th and 9th dimensions and magic as a reasonable explanation for all thing that don’t make sense, that doesn’t make it a good story.

the story does not take place in the 6th dimension, and time travel is impossible if you also have a multiverse, they are in fact exclusive.

this is more of a moral argument, but there’s a fairly large difference between saving a bee or not doing that, since not saving the bee doesn’t endanger the entire species. but if we DON’T save the world, then it WILL end from the void.

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you know, i love doctor who, personally (tenth doctor best doctor), but it plays very fast and loose with which concept of time travel it uses (for example, the concept of “fixed points” infers that the entire universe is a causal loop and the doctor is just along for the ride, experiencing the events that would have always required his attention at some point, however the entire donna “there’s something on your back” scenario pretended they were playing with linear time, meanwhile there was the “house” episode with the woman who was the tardis introducing pocket dimensions, meanwhile rose now lives in a parallel universe where her dad is alive, meanwhile in “the waters of mars” the doctor tries to alter a fixed point, forcing it to rubber band on itself, lopping back into a causal paradox)

23

Sorry, this doesn’t make sense to me - how come?

What would it take for the character to have a meaningful story xor fulfilling actions of great moral magnitude?

24

a linear time travel story, which is for the most part what we have, except for yulia knowing a future version of us, that’s literally the only plot point that derails the story, as it means that the void happens in the presence of our actions, making it an unchangeable fact. if the timeline was linear all the way through, then all we have to do is find a way to create the branch at the right moment to save the world, and that branch (being our current present) overwrites any past states of the world.

well going back to the building analogy, you either stay in your building and change whats there, or you travel into a different building. but no matter what you do, you can’t travel to an earlier point in your building, nor can you alter your original building while you are within another building. (i can play with the thermostat in my house, but i can’t go to your house and change your thermostat and expect my house to heat up) trying to do both is literally like trying to have your cake and eat it to (since if you eat it, you no longer have it)

25

As I said, timey wimey shenanigans, though as much on the writers side of things than in-universe.

IMO, the concept of a multiverse doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive with time travel unless it suits one’s own head cannon or one has decided the rules of the universe demand it. Since we have no proof that time travel (or mulitverses) are possible IRL, if KMQ wants to have time travel, multiverses and 7.32 dimensions, there’s not really much we could say to disagree unless he’s being inconsistent with his established universe’s rules. You can say that X contradicts rule Y, or prevents Z from happening, but you can’t really say that rules 1, 2 and 3 are mutually exclusive just because they disagree with your preferred viewpoint on a thing (time travel).

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26

How would a story based on a dimensional play of multiverses downplay the character’s actions?
The outcome will either way be that one universe will be saved, no?

I see you’re talking from the meaningfulness of the story now not from theoretical physics?

I don’t think these are mutually exclusive even in the case of a story.

How about this:
You come to my house and fix my thermostat and then go to your own house and fix yours; as you’re the only one who has the ability to:

  1. Fix it
  2. Travel between our houses
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27

Given that I’ve already admitted to not paying attention in class, that’s what I assumed was already going on.

But what if you could? What if the in-game said you can travel to an earlier state of the building while there were also other buildings you could go to? If you find that unsatisfying that’s fair enough, but I don’t.

As a demonstrable expert in eating cake, that’s what happens when you eat your cake then steal someone else’s. If you then decide to kill their grandfather so they don’t come after you to take your cake, that sounds reasonable to me.

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Or go back in time and eat a different cake every time in a different universe - OMG!

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well as i said in the other post discussing paradoxes, we do, in fact, have evidence that time travel (at least, physical time travel) is impossible, as doing so would quantum break the universe.

the problem is they ARE being inconsistent with the rules, as the entire story EXCEPT YULIA is consistent with linear time travel.

it’s mostly a percentage, either you save the one and only universe that exists (thus, 100% of universes) or you save one of a nearly infinite number (what is virtual 0%)

except that (in the context of last epoch) I’M NOT the only person with the power to travel between our houses, the mage and the acolyte KNOW EACHOTHER, which means that they have to exist in the same universe, but only ONE of them can have the epoch stone, which means we absolutely have to be dealing with multiple universes, which opens the door to a bunch of nonsense EXCEPT linear time travel, as linear time travel is confined to the one single universe it takes place in, now all of that is fine and dandy, but if you try to mix time travel AND universe hopping, then the only physical option is to bootstrap and all of the stories, scenarios, and events that take place are completely arbitrary as they can only end in us perpetuating them.

30

IMO it’s a bit hubristic to say that we know something is impossible in physics. If you go back to the 1800s, physicists had been exceptionally successful in explaining theories for everything that they had seen. They had theories that explained all the forces in the universe, Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism (1861/2) and Newtons law of gravity (1686)! It wasn’t until the late 1800s and early 1900s that experiments were done that started to shine a light into the quantum realm and showed us that the universe wasn’t quite as understood as we thought.

If you then fast forward to today, we have the supremely successful standard model that has explained all the forces in the universe. Except we know it’s incomplete as we have yet to have a quantum description of gravity and I suspect that we would really like to have a theory where the values for fundamental constants fall out of the equations rather than have to be “hard coded” in.

So yes, we have evidence that physical time travel is not possible, much like, I’m sure, they had evidence in the 1800s that powered heavier than air flight was impossible before the Wright brothers showed us it wasn’t in 1903. We know that our understanding of the universe is incomplete, and who knows what new insights and capabilities we will be able to tease out of a complete GUT/TOE just like quantum mechanics gave us electronics and a foundational understanding of chemistry. Will our future, less imperfect, understanding of the universe give us the traditional staples of science fiction (some flavour of ftl, time travel, etc) I have no idea though I hope it does. As a species we are gradually replacing our glasses with less imperfect ones and as we do we notice small cracks in our understanding of the universe, so far those cracks have lead to some fantastic insights.

Yes, but you’re assuming that both the acolyte and mage get the epoch stone and use it. You’ve stepped beyond just explaining the one story that you are playing at any given time to trying to explain every single game/story that every player of LE has/is/will play. Have you considered that the devs are either a)f***ing with you vis-a-vis that particular section of the story (the ending scene of Red Dwarf’s Tikka to Ride episode FTW) or b)didn’t realise the implications of it?

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31

or

c) actually care.

(j/k)

32

In storytelling there are two forms of logic. Intellectual and emotional. The art is in wielding the two when appropriate in the best ways possible. Discussing what works and what doesn’t work based on the real life physical world in a work of fiction set in a world/universe that isn’t ours can be problematic. It’s tied to the concept of ‘suspension of disbelief.’

The Yulia paradox being outside and the one break in fitting into ‘linear’ time travel seems to effectively be something that breaks your suspension of disbelief on a logic level. That’s completely fair and if it doesn’t work for you it doesn’t work for you.

I can look past that with the idea that it’s not our universe, doesn’t necessarily conform to our laws of physics and science. It certainly BORROWS from them and has things are similar but there are also differences elsewhere, for instance magic (and not to downplay Arthur C. Clarke) but SCIENCE fiction should certainly conform, as best we know, to the known universe because “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from *magic".” But in FANTASY fiction this isn’t necessarily the case.

For me, the EMOTIONAL logic in this case, the impact the relationship with Yulia gives me and the strange sensation that we’ve met before but it hasn’t happened for me but has for her, and the ties that creates for me within the story, grants significant more impact. There for the small intellectual inconsistency (if it is there - stories not done yet) doesn’t break my suspension of disbelief.

TLDR: The ‘Yulia Paradox’ as describe might not make INTELLECTUAL sense but it definitely makes EMOTIONAL sense and works for me. I have no issues with it and my suspension of disbelief is not overcome by it.

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33

From what I can gather from the Forgotten Knight, you might be playing as the most recent “echo” of yourself. So, when you touch the first shard, you become “infinite possibilities”.

Each previously possible “echo” tried and failed to stop the events leading up to the void, overwriting each previous version of the timeline with a new one, so Yulia knew your last “echo” as it were.

I believe this is why the Knight describes themselves as a branch of forgotten timelines, basically it’s the sentient results all your previous overwritten timelines in a suit of armour.

I hope I explained this in a way that makes sense? But, that’s my take on this, you’re basically constantly “overwriting” timelines, like someone recording something over the top of a video in a VCR.

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34

its been well known for some time that matter cannot exist in the same place as other matter, i’m not sure how an assertion that this is true is hubris.

I only have one response to this: multiplayer.

and as i said in the original post and a few days ago in that post, this is consistent with linear time travel, but that also means that we would never be able to encounter information from our own future (like what yulia presents us with) as it would require our current present to have been overwritten at best (leaving the information no way to get back to us) or force us to become the same version of our future self that sent back the information in the first place (which is a paradox)

the best version of events is if they just fix yulia and let the story be linear, but the most likely outcome is we’ll be shoved into a multiverse plot where we can logically encounter ourselves, and nothing else matters.

35

while i appreciate the level of analysis and attention to detail, i think you’re making a fatal mistake here… and i know it’s already been brought up but i feel it’s worth reiterating: this is a fantasy world with magic. it’s not hard sci-fi. the epoch is magical in nature.

the story doesn’t have to fit our understanding of physics, or theories about how time travel would work in our universe. for all the we know the epoch has some quality that causes the user not to be subject to the laws of causality. because it’s all fun make-em-ups.

basically by insisting that things have to make sense according to our understanding of the universe, you are making a choice not to enjoy the story for what it is. you’re free to do so of course, but i’d suggest letting the story play out before digging in your heels about what “must be”.

just my 2 cents.

36

thats fine, but the problem isn’t the story fitting in to an understood theory of time travel, the problem is the story is contradicting it’s own established information on the subject, magic or no, that’s just bad writing.

37

I was more thinking about your apparent stance (which I may have mis-inferred) that because we know a thing now, that it is correct & & will always remain correct in the future, for example, when I said:
“IMO, the concept of a multiverse doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive with time travel unless it suits one’s own head cannon or one has decided the rules of the universe demand it. Since we have no proof that time travel (or mulitverses) are possible IRL”,
your response was
“well as i said in the other post discussing paradoxes, we do, in fact, have evidence that time travel (at least, physical time travel) is impossible, as doing so would quantum break the universe.”

I agree that with our current knowledge a number of things are impossible, physical time travel, faster than light travel/communication, etc. But I accept that our knowledge is incomplete (quantum mechanics & relativity don’t seem to play well together) & that in the future when we have figured out how to marry the two up we might be able to see a way to doing those things that previously were “impossible”. Just like powered heavier than air flight was “clearly impossible” in the 1800s, but by the early 1900s the Wright brothers had proved that it was possible (granted, that wasn’t due to any revolutionary new understanding of physics, so the metaphor is a bit flawed).

Which is what I thought you would say, hence my comment about you seeming to step beyond explaining how the story works as it currently stands (single player) & move on to trying to explain the wider “story” of how all of us players IRL are playing the game & what that means for the in-universe explanation.

Quite how one would explain that I don’t know, other than multiverses with each player playing each of their own characters within their own universe. shrugs It’s late, I’m tired.

But I do much prefer this kind of physic-y existential discussion than the more airy-fairy philosophical discussion @kiss_me_quick does…

No, but it does need to be logically consistent & obey it’s own rules. The original Star Wars trilogy were awesome because they gave you rules & stuck to them, then the most recent trilogy ripped them up in the name of cinematic expediency & because the writers thought that what they were doing was cool, as well as to “one-upmanship” the previous films (though to be fair, the expanded universe books did that too).

What @Zarono is bravely trying to do is to figure out the rules & logic of WTF is happening.

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38

fair enough, i guess i’m just not fully sold on the idea that it’s self-contradictory yet… we don’t have the whole story. i’m also not too bothered if it doesn’t end up making sense. i’d like a coherent story, but i’m still gonna enjoy the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff regardless.

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39

Along with some tea & biscuits.

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Slightly off-topic but this is a great example. It’s also a major (I could bitch really hard about this if I had a soapbox) issue with the current state of storytelling in Hollywood.

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